From the Garage: Tower Revolution

By TGRStaff, on December 10th, 2008

Welcome to From the Garage, TGR’s weekly feature spotlighting Xbox Live Community Games and independent development. Given the enormous amount of content that is hitting the marketplace, we’ll keep you clear of the garbage and point you in the direction of treasure. This week, we feature Tower Revolution.

Tower defense games are fairly common these days, with recent entries in the genre being PixelJunk Monsters on the PlayStation Network and Defend Your Castle on WiiWare. With Tower Revolution hitting the Xbox 360 Community Games store, Xbox owners now have their own tower defense title to play.

Tower Revolution plays very much like your standard tower defense game. You have a beginning where the enemies pour in, the middle ground for where you blast the baddies dead, and an end point that you do not want to let them reach. Prior to the enemies spawning, you’re allocated some cash to build different defense units. Those units consist of air, ground, combo, and magic fighters, which will either help you against ground or air units (or, in the case of combo units, protect against both), while magic units will give your other units various upgraded abilities. Once your defenses are in place, the enemies begin to pour in and test your placements. While your defenses tear through the enemies (which look like little pebbles) you’re awarded additional money that can be spent upgrading and repairing existing units or creating new ones.

All the basic maneuvers of your typical tower defense game arel included in Tower Revolution, as you can see. However, the problem with the game is that it never reaches outside of the genre’s conventions and attempts to innovate in any way. In the one area where it could attempt to innovate — art style — the creator apparently did not care to do so. The screenshot at the beginning of the article tells you all that you need to know about the extremely basic and downright aesthetically displeasing look that Tower Revolution suffers from.

Aside from the terrible art style, there isn’t one thing that is technically wrong with Tower Revolution. Yet, the game is completely soulless, devoid of charm, and has nothing new to offer. Saving your time and your $5 would be the right call.